Fire at fuel plant investigated

The Lenoir Fire Department is still trying to determine exactly what caused a small fire Friday evening at Foothills Bio-Energies on Virginia Street.

Firefighters were dispatched shortly after 10:30 p.m. to the business and arrived to find smoke coming from all sides of the building, a press release by the department said. Firefighters had to cut two roll-up doors to get to the fire, as the business was closed at the time. The fire was quickly extinguished.

The fire was isolated to a room where a machine filters bio-diesel fuel, said Randy Dellinger, the company's general manager.

"We think the fire started in a pan underneath the press, but we don't know exactly what happened," Dellinger said. "We had to replace the machine."

Foothills Bio-Energies, which has been in business since 2006, converts soybean and other vegetable matter into bio-diesel fuel, Dellinger said.